The Mulberry Tree

“Ordered by Phillip Waterman” was written at the top of the page. Dear Phillip, Bailey thought as she signed at the bottom. Maybe he hadn’t bought her dinner, but he had ordered a cleaning crew. Part of her thought she ought to send them away and assert her independence, but another part of her didn’t relish spending weeks on her hands and knees scrubbing.

She signed and handed the clipboard back to the man.

“Yo, Hank!” one of the men called from the front porch. “What do we do with this stuff?”

Bailey stepped out around what looked to be an unpruned butterfly bush to see what the men were referring to. To one side of the front door, on the ground, were some boxes and bags. There were also several pieces of paper stuck into the frame of the window to the right of the fallen door.

Turning, the truck driver looked at Bailey for the answer.

Quickly, she went to the pile and began to examine it. Inside one box was what looked to be a tuna noodle casserole in a Pyrex dish. “Welcome,” the attached card said, and it was signed “Patsy Longacre.” There were two roast chickens wrapped in foil, no card. A greasy paper bag held about half a pound of nails. “Thought these might come in handy,” read another note torn off the bottom of a page of lined school paper. Another bag held four apples, each one carefully wrapped in newspaper. A quart jar with an old zinc lid held homemade bread-and-butter pickles. The name Iris Koffman was on the label. On the windowsill were three bunches of wild-flowers, each one tied with string. An old, rusty hoe was leaning against the wall. The unsigned note on it read, “You need it, and heaven knows my husband never uses the thing.”

In the window frame (which had a half-inch gap in it, so there was plenty of room) were business cards and brochures. There was a card for an insurance man whose office was on Main Street in Calburn. There was a well digger, and a real estate agent. “If you want to sell, call me,” was written on the back. There was a card for a handyman. Bailey kissed this card, then stuck it into her jeans pocket.

“Hey! I got a card,” one of the cleaning men standing in front of her teased.

She had no reply to his teasing, so she said, “I’ll take care of these things. You can start cleaning in there.”

One of the men was looking through a dirty window. “I’m real sorry we left the flamethrower at the last job.”

Bailey gave them her best Get busy! glare, but they didn’t react as men did when Jimmie gave them that look. Instead, laughing, they went back to their truck and started removing machines and supplies.

She pulled down a big envelope that was stuck in the window and opened it. Inside was a welcome package from the Calburn Chamber of Commerce, the president of which was Janice Nesbitt. There was a map of Calburn, showing Main Street and the three streets running off it. Yesterday Phillip had driven her to the house from the opposite direction, so she’d not seen the town, and now she wondered what stores were there, and what services. At the far corner of the town map was an arrow pointing to somewhere off the map. “Your house is this way,” someone had written.

“The middle of nowhere,” Bailey muttered to herself, then looked up to see one of the cleaning men holding out an empty box toward her. Smiling her thanks, she took the box and put all the items that had been left by the townspeople inside. Odd, she thought, but when she’d . . . well, when she’d looked different, men hadn’t been so thoughtful as to offer her boxes to put her things into.

Smiling, Bailey carried the box back to the barn. She was hungry, and she wanted some privacy to eat, and she wanted time to ponder the idea of living in a town where people left gifts of welcome on her doorstep. But she wasn’t to have any privacy as someone started blowing a horn, and she instinctively knew that she was being called. With a chicken leg in one hand and an apple in the other, she ran down the path, then stopped at what she saw. There were three trucks in her driveway, another two parked on the road, and four more behind them looking for space to park. There were eight men walkin

g toward Bailey, clipboards held out for her signature.

“Would you guys mind?” said a man in a FedEx uniform. “I need to get out of here. Are you Bailey James?” he asked, then barely waited for her nod before handing her a letter pack and a clipboard.

She signed, then, not quite knowing what else to do, pulled the tab and opened the package. Inside were two envelopes, both of them with Phillip’s return address on them. “A housewarming gift,” the note inside the first one said. “And don’t worry, they can afford it.” Bailey smiled. Obviously, Phillip was somehow charging everything to Atlanta and Ray. The second envelope held a stack of crisp, new fifty-dollar bills clipped together. “I know how you like to tip,” he’d written.

Smiling, Bailey looked up—and saw what looked to be now about a dozen men, their faces impatient as they waited for her to sign their papers.

“Who’s first?” she asked, then held out her hands and started signing. When she signed without reading the papers thoroughly, she knew that Jimmie’s spirit was somewhere frowning at her.

“You want to show me where the gas lines are?” a man asked.

“And where do you want the telephone jacks?” asked another.

“Where’s your fuse box?” asked a third.

“I don’t really know,” Bailey said, looking at the house. “I haven’t been inside yet.”

That announcement silenced them. It was her house, but she’d not been inside it. The men looked at each other. “Crazy dame,” seemed to silently pass between them.

“I’ve been here twenty minutes, and I still haven’t seen the place,” a man walking toward her said. “It’s such a jungle that I’m afraid I’m gonna step in quicksand. I’m from Spenser’s Landscaping Service. We were told to clean up and prune and mow—and we’re to do it all in one day. I’ve just sent one of the men back to get the chain saws and his brother-in-law’s threshing machine. You have any special instructions for us?”

Bailey could only stare at him; she couldn’t think of any instructions to give him concerning a garden she’d barely seen. She shook her head no, but as he turned away, she called after him, “Don’t hurt the mulberry tree.”

Glancing back at her, but still walking, he said, “Does that mean I can’t saw out the man the thing ate?” He didn’t crack a smile.

“He’s needed for fertilizer,” she returned in the same serious tone. “Just add his wake to the bill.”

“Will do,” the man said, then gave her a mock salute and turned back around. Smiling at the exchange, the other men walked away too, and Bailey followed them inside for her first look at the house that Jimmie had left her.

As she walked across the fallen door, she closed her eyes a moment and offered up the word charming to any listening guardian angels. She really hoped that the inside was a great deal better than the outside.